The proposed research examines the reciprocal relationship between work experiences and self-dimensions during late adolescence and early adulthood. The dimensions of self include personality and motivational components (esteem, efficay, aspiration, sex-role orientation and work attachment). The concepts and measures for work aim at better capture of the large variations in work histories that differentiate orderly from disorderly careers. The objectives include: (1) an improved test of the discouraged worker hypothesis, which has direct mental health implications; (2) an investigation of the causal nexus between sex-role orientation and work experiences; and (3) and investigation of changes in women's work status and work attachment over a continuous thirteen-year interval after high school. The database provides a heterogeneous statewide sample (N=5849) of men and women surveyed during the last two years of high school and thirteen years later in 1979. The methodolgy includes structural equation models that estimate the stability of self-dimensions over time, the effects of self-dimensions on work experiences, and the effects of work experiences on self-dimensions, and continuous-time discrete-state stochastic models of work attachment.